The Father of Truth
by Ju-dou
Summary: Just for today, breathe me and say goodbye... In the present Audrey and Nathan fight to keep a town together, with little idea of the battles that have gone before. Audrey/Sarah/Nathan.
1. Chapter 1

****_A/N: Hello! Obviously, I own nothing. This is my first Haven fic, not totally sure where it's going, I am a terror about plotting, and seem to go by the flying by the seat of my pants method so I fully anticipate some plot knots if I continue it! Would love to know what you think._

* * *

**War is hell**

She doesn't remember during the night but perhaps that would be the most obvious time. It is during the day, when it should be too busy, too bright, too distracting. It isn't. She remembers and it is dark once more, a sticky gelatinous night that is inhaled like the dust of the scrubland surrounding them.

A figure at the end of her cot.

It is Captain Malloy. A light from somewhere glints a blade across the dog tags hanging around his neck. She can smell the coffee on his breath from here, the blood recently washed from his face.

She knows before he tells her.

Dead. The boy they gave every breath to save is dead. He bled like a split dam all over the floor, into the earth until it turned the ground to rust. It came from his nose, his mouth, his ears, from everywhere and Malloy is glad she didn't see it. But, she sees it now. She sees the way his fragile collarbones stood out, how the sweat pooled there, how his eyes asked a question in a language she didn't understand.

She doesn't understand. There is no sense in it, no reason.

She will learn.

There is a reason for most everything.

There is a reason why the following day a baby survives even as his mother slips from their grasp. They call him Marshall after Captain Malloy, who, despite his protests, cannot disguise his pleasure. He tells her something over their tinned noodles that night - which later, much later - she will think quite profound, he says that everything is easier to accept when you realise that no individual matters: _not one of us is_ _worth a damn, excuse my language_, _no man (or woman) is worth anything alone. _

_So, it doesn't matter if we die?_ she asks. But, that isn't what he means.

A little of each of the men they lost and saved beneath canvas, in flickering light, late into most nights and throughout the day, are here in Haven, in the veterans now in her charge. We only lose little parts of a whole, splinters.

She liked Malloy, liked the muscle that joined his neck to his shoulder where her tongue could find a smooth scar and the radiating beat of his pulse. He kissed her on the inside of her arm, the only place it tickled. He made their rushed love-making seem like something that mattered. Until he began to turn his gaze from hers, flinch from the intensity of her touch, avoid her in the mess, and it was as if he knew.

It was an incendiary bomb, on the road to Incheon. They brought him back to the base and she hoped he was already dead. He was not.

It was she who drew up the morphine, a dose far exceeding any recommendation for sedation or pain. A lethal dose: a liquid death. She forced herself to look at his face as she administered it, at his half open eyes, whites turned red, the setting of a crimson sun. Then she sat beside him, her fingers resting on a miraculous patch of skin by his shoulder, a freckled golden piece of the past. She is not religious so no prayer was brought to mind, but she did tell him he was worth far more than a damn. She never doubts she did the right thing.

He visits her sometimes. In the little hours: the gaps of time where the lines blur. A lilting smile and the dust still in the sweaty roots of his sandy hair. She wonders about baby Marshall, the tiny Korean boy probably long renamed by his grandmother. She hopes he runs and rolls and lives. Sometimes, when she thinks of something before the doctors, when her ministrations elicit a difference in a traumatised vet, she says a _thank-you_ to Malloy, for reminding her every splinter heals a whole.

* * *

**Devices and desires**

_We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. _

There are twenty-seven holes in a pattern on the tops of his sandals; there are six diagonal scuffs on the toe of the left. He did not polish them as asked. He usually does as he is asked but, today, on this particular Sunday, he has not. The sermon continues in a similar vein and James suspects that his mother is not really listening, either, although she is not examining her court shoes, which are also unpolished.

He sighs and lets his attention wander, rather pleasurably, to the forthcoming trip to Rattlesnake Canyon. James' chest swells with pride under the ticking stripe of his Sunday shirt as he recalls his father's assertion that he is ready for the hike, and the promise of being allowed to use the new Rolleiflex camera. He must be smiling because his mother gives him a little nudge and a half-smile to indicate that the _confessing of faults_ is not necessarily something to grin about.

After church they go for root beer floats at Arnie's, but his mother seems distracted and her eyes follow people drifting home from the Sunday service along Main Street in a way that is too vigilant, too watchful. He flicks his tongue into the frozen foam on his spoon.

"Are you OK, Mom?"

A film disappears and her cheeks fill with colour. "Oh, I'm sorry, honey."

"Do you have a small pot to hang on my knapsack?"

"Hmm?"

"To scare the mountain lions, y'know?"

She looks at him quickly this time, refocusing, the line between her eyebrows deepening. "Maybe you shouldn't go on the hike this weekend."

"What?" James almost chokes on a lump of ice cream and covers his mouth with a napkin. "You're kidding?"

"I just think you could wait till the Fall."

"No!" he says, a little too loudly, a knot in his chest.

She leans in closer, lowering her voice, but she is not angry and when she reaches across the table she holds his wrist too tightly.

"Is this why I got root beer instead of Sunday school?"

"I'm sorry, James." Her fingers find the pulse between the fragile bones below his palm.

"But, Dad said."

"I know, and he's sorry, too."

His father will not look at him when they return home and James is disgusted with both of them as he stomps up to his bedroom and slams the door. He lies face down on the bed and presses his face into the quilt, breathing in the smell of washing powder, the scent of home. He pummels a fist into the pillow, hot resentment a ball in his chest. He pretends he is paralysed, like that kid, Brian, the next block over. He pretends he can't feel anything, can't move; that he doesn't care.

James hears the doorbell and the frustrating rumble of indiscernible voices. He allows curiosity to get the better of him and shakes the pins and needles from his legs. He opens the bedroom door slowly and drops immediately to his hands and knees to avoid being seen from the bottom of the stairs. The backs of his parents are visible, his father's flannel shirt and his mother's dress with the sailor collar, and between them a man he recognises - if only as a mild distraction from his church daydream- the young minister standing in for Reverend Patterson.

Suddenly, James wants very much not to be seen.

* * *

**Heal thyself**

Sarah never wonders what Stuart has seen and she keeps up a monologue whilst she bathes him, one that has nothing to do with either of their lives before they came here. She asks questions, though, she asks about his thoughts, his food preferences, his opinion of Senator Kennedy, and she leaves spaces in case he ever decides to slip a reply between her words. The other nurses laugh a little but mostly they leave her be; the striking newcomer who can render even an arrogant Resident speechless with a glance. They do not entirely trust her, or her 'special assignment,' and although she is eminently capable they do not catch her eye as they head out to a diner after work.

She finds she doesn't care. Her heart skids against her rib cage as she thinks of the stranger and his promise.

In the locker room she changes into her civilian clothes, tossing the starched white uniform into a laundry hamper. Sarah's hands run down the sides of her dress and she takes a deep breath, smiling to herself. Yes, she will meet him after work, how could she not? It seems the only thing to do. He is so intoxicatingly peculiar and she finds herself wondering how he tastes, how he feels. Shaking her head to dispel such thoughts, the shiver down her spine continues and she picks up her bag.

Somehow, it feels as if there is string, something fine, the web of a spider manipulating her body like a marionette as they sit and drink from bottles of beer. Then, it is gone and she feels the most terrific relief. When her hand touches his face she is sinking into him, cell by cell, his skin trembles under her fingers, as if he has never been touched before.

She thinks so little about what they are doing as he catches her hand, and they are tripping up the beach, plunging into the front seat of the car, removing their clothes. Sarah sees nothing but Nathan, and her hands run over his shoulder blades. He will take flight, he will leave; she knows that for certain, then.

He will leave but he will not be gone.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Thank you to everyone who has read, any comments would be really really gratefully appreciated. __ Also, this is AU from towards the end of the series 2 finale._

**Our resistance will be long and painful**

His mother has her back to him at the sink, her apron tied in a hasty knot, sun light spills like a cape over her shoulders. James opens the icebox and removes a soda, condensation immediately chilling his hand. It is hot, and when his mother turns to look at him he sees the wisps of hair that frame her face stuck flat with perspiration. Her eyes regard him, lids low as if it is too bright to see. He purses his lips, thrusts his chin forwards, defiant, for some reason, in the teak furnace of the kitchen. She worries for him, she loves him so. But, he is a nine-year-old boy, he longs for danger, adventure, a mystery, a commie next-door-neighbor to spy on. These are things he wants, he does not want to be told _no_, to be kept safe.

She presses her wet hands onto her apron, palm down, so he can see soap suds twinkle between her fingers. He thinks of splashing in a tub of bubbles in the back yard; water running from his hair, the taste in his mouth: a bitter taste. The taste of the bar of soap his father used to wash his mouth out last week when he uttered a cuss-word in their presence. He struggled, kicking back and missing, his father's dark forearm across his chest and cupped over one shoulder.

"Brian and his mom need our help," she says.

"Huh?"

"Brian's father has been killed in Vietnam, and they are going to lose their home."

James says nothing. He cannot picture Brian's father but thinks he is tall, _was _tall, and never around, or maybe he'd just been inside, behind the picture window, helping Brian's pale mother lift him in and out of the downstairs bath. It is awkward, this moment, and James does not know what he should say, or if he should say anything, at all. A thought occurs to him.

"That isn't right, President Johnson helps widows."

"That's true, but Brian's mother isn't a widow."

"You said Mr Cormant is dead," he says, looking over her shoulder at the wind chime moving in the window.

"He was somebody else's husband."

"Oh." This information is uncomfortably adult.

"So, Brian and his mom are going to stay in our annex."

This is both a frightening and embarrassing revelation. The thought of Brian making an appearance in his invalid carriage on their front porch, for all to see - maybe waiting for James to come off the school bus – a towel tucked into his t-shirt to catch his saliva - makes James want to shrivel into the ground. His mother is watching him and he is blushing, his forehead tingling at the selfishness of his thoughts. They have a name for Brian amongst the neighborhood kids – _Thumbelina_, after the dolls so popular amongst little girls, with the soft bodies and arms and legs that turn in at unnatural angles. Eyes that do not see in a face that belongs to a baby; it could be crueler.

It is cruel enough.

Outside his father is washing the car. James sits on the porch steps, his elbows resting on his knees. Without turning around his father tosses a wet sponge, it lands squarely at the boy's feet and he needs no further invitation to join in soaping the ancient station wagon. The sun glances off the top of his father's balding head, his Sunday shirt wet against his back, they are not too precious about clothes in this family.

"You'll help me collect the boxes for Brian's mom."

"Sure."

"I'm sorry about the hike, son." He slaps the sponge down onto the roof and rubs so the soap and water run down his arm.

James shrugs. "OK, but I'm not a little kid, anymore."

"Then it's probably time your mom and I talked to you about some things."

"What things?" James scratches the back of his neck, squinting up at his father.

They sit facing him on the couch; his father passes a towel over his face and hair so the strands around his ears stand on end. James looks at his mother but she is looking down at her lap, her apron wrapped around her hands as if she is containing something inside it. James' eyes drift to his knees and he picks at a scab in an attempt to ignore the nausea burning in his chest. Are they getting divorced? Dying? Moving out of state?

"James, we need to tell you that you are adopted," his father says.

James says nothing.

"And, we love you very _very_ much," his mother says, her voice is far away.

She is still speaking when James bolts from the room.

He thinks he might be sick. He slams the screen door in the kitchen and stumbles down the steps into the backyard. Running hard until he can't feel his legs James reaches where the dilapidated fence separates their yard from the pines beyond. A branch tears a ribbon of blood down his arm and rips a hole in his shirt as he presses his body through the gap and lands on his knees in the needles. He breathes. It doesn't go away, the words are not returned.

He is a stranger and so are they.

James closes his eyes. It is not sleep that comes.

_He is held close, folded inside, a petal in the palm of a hand, the rushing pulse of blood at his ear. He is satiated. He is safe. James hears a voice above his head, a whisper, words spoken into his crown. Precious boy. You are so loved._

_It is her. It is her skin beneath his cheek._

_She will not let him go; she will never let him go._

_Mister Sandman, bring me a dream._

_He is part of her and he cannot imagine slipping from her hands, the rush of cold air, a separation that will tear, thread by thread. He is where he belongs._

_Sunshine, she calls him, sunshine. Her finger traces the shell of his ear, the downy hair, the soft nape of his neck. He does not cry when he is held like this, next to her bare skin, he only cries when they are apart. It is as if he knows. _

_I will only be a turn of time away._

When James regains consciousness his nose is bleeding and he is so very cold.

* * *

**An invincible summer **

The leaves of fall are closing, dropping down plains like birds in flight to create a patchwork beneath her court shoes. She walks with the posture of a prom queen, although she never had a prom. She glances down at her white gloves whilst waiting to cross the street. She turns heads, has done from the moment she set foot from that ferry, and her recent activities, the help she has given to those in need, have made her name a whisper in every corner. The blue eyes are keen, sharp for detail, but if one were to look closely there are tears at their corners that are not due to the increasing wind.

She pushes open the door of the Haven Herald, just in time, for she is about to faint.

"Sarah!" Dave's hand is under her elbow and he steers her into a chair.

When she opens her eyes he is kneeling in front of her, his hand in hers where it rests on her knee, he removes it hastily with a little shake of his head.

"You're very pale."

"I'm quite all right."

"Is that Sarah?" Vince calls from the adjoining room. "Shall I fix you a tea?"

"With lots of sugar," Dave calls back.

"You boys are too sweet to me," she says with a smile. "Always ready to help. I don't think you'll want to help me now."

Dave frowns as she looks away, her lips pressed together, eyes too bright. "What do you mean?"

Vince dips down to hand her the cup of tea, and she nods her thanks, unable to look at him, either.

"I'm pregnant."

They don't say anything for some minutes and Sarah chooses to look at the flecks of powdered milk on the surface of the tea. The cup is warm through her gloves but a shiver is pinching its way up her spine. When she does look up both men have taken seats, Dave in his high backed leather chair and Vince on the edge of the desk. They are both looking at her, and neither has managed to close his mouth.

"You're shocked."

"No, well… yes," Dave says, looking to his brother for help.

"I've never minded being alone. Now, it seems rather frightening," she says. "And it takes a great deal to frighten me."

"You're not alone," Vince says.

They offer their hands and she takes them.

_You're not alone._

And yet, she feels it, as she picks up her car from the hospital and drives to the Mason place. She has always felt out of step, out of sync, in some moments it is more acute than others, as if she is moving in parallel to the rest of the world. Perhaps that is why she coped so well with war, part of her wasn't there. Technically, of course, for the first time in her life she is inextricably bound to someone else. She parks the car just out of sight of the house and takes a deep breath of a wind that tastes of salt. She is so tired.

She is needed here, he told her so, as if there was some sort of divine plan she wasn't privy to, but now it seems - whatever the design - it has been derailed. This was not planned.

She thinks of Mabel, a girl who served alongside her in the WAC, and the extraordinary lengths she went to, absolving herself of a sin she felt too terrible to survive in exchange for one she would never recover from. At the time Sarah could not say she wouldn't have done the same, and it made her complicit. Nausea swells in her chest as she thinks of the blood, there was so much blood, and if it had not been for Malloy Mabel would have died with her baby.

Sarah could not do that. She wants this baby, despite the fact its conception is the most impossible thing that's happened to her so far, and that's saying something. Nobody would believe her if she told them the truth, Vince and Dave might, but she won't tell them, the looks on their faces made her think that they'd attempt to drag an unsuspecting Nathan back from the future and she knows with some certainty that he's needed there.

She needs him _here_.

This cannot be about what she needs.

Yellow jasmine; as child someone would put it in her hair and tell her it was honeysuckle. She knew better, but it taught her something: poison is proffered in a beautiful disguise. She does not want to be what poisons Nathan.

* * *

**Let them not spill me**

_I loved you from the very beginning._

The voice rings in his ears as he squeezes back through the fence.

"Hello James."

He blinks. "Oh, hello Mrs… Cormant."

"Call me Tilly," she says, smiling, a hand absently on the top of Brian's head.

James tries not to look at Brian.

"Your father is collecting some of our things."

"I should go help."

"Stay," she says, flicking a stray curl of dark hair away from her forehead. Her arms are slim and tanned gold, there is a scar running along the inside of her wrist. She is wearing a dress his mother would call 'flighty.' James considers all these things in an attempt to block his ears to the noise Brian is making. "Brian likes you," she says. "He likes to watch you riding your bike."

There is something so infinitely sad about this that James blushes; ashamed to have legs that work.

"You've cut your arm." She frowns and removes her hand from Brian's chair, reaching out to James. For one inexplicable moment he thinks she will pass her fingers across the cut and make it disappear. She wipes away a trickle of blood with her thumb, her touch is not unpleasant but it is the kind that feels as if it could turn into a pinch. She takes his hand. "_An arrow in the hand of a warrior_."

"Excuse me?"

"Are you pure in heart, James?"

This is a trick question, of that he is sure, and he is so uncomfortable now that he would almost rather look at Brian than his mother's unforgiving hazel eyes.

James shrugs, one quick jerk of his shoulders. "I'm just a normal kid."

She is still holding his hand, and a smile twists the corner of her mouth. "No. That isn't what you are."

James wants to pull his hand away but she is holding it too tight. The back of his neck is burning.

"Please let me go."

She releases him immediately.

"The Lord could still spare you. But, you must be brave…and selfless."

He does not look at her again and runs up the incline of the back yard, his sandals slipping on the grass and his hands curled into fists at his sides. The day billows out around him, enveloping him out of sight, reaching its sinews around his pounding heart. Inside, James presses his back against his bedroom door for a moment to catch his breath before securing it shut with the chair from his desk beneath the doorknob. Then, he lies down on the cowhide rug beside his bed, his knees pulled up to his narrow chest as a dry sob blows from his lips.

This is unfair. It drops away. Bit by bit: every birthday, every Christmas, each hike and swim, barbecues in the yard, being thrown into the air and cheered on at little league games. Tainted by a lie so big it obscures the light. He is from elsewhere, his bones untethered from their core. He had a mother who left him behind.

"James, let me in, son."

He unravels himself from the ground and removes the blockade from the door. His father takes a seat on the small chair he made for James himself and motions for the boy to sit on the bed. James studies his father's face for a moment, the lines around his eyes and mouth, the close cropped fair hair, a face so familiar.

"This was never going to be easy." He passes his hand over his chin. "Maybe you could just ask me what you want to know, and I'll try and answer."

"Who are my real parents?"

"Your mother was a nurse; she gave you to us when you were two weeks old. I don't know who your father was."

"Why couldn't I stay with her?"

His father does not answer, he shakes his head. James rolls over onto his side on the bed facing the window, his hands by his mouth.

"Why hasn't she come to find me?"

Why?

_You must be brave. _Does Mrs. Cormant know? _Tilly._ Did she know his real mother? He doesn't ask his father these questions; the day is too full and heavy already. James does not eat dinner that day, he does not come out of his bedroom, and they leave a tray outside his door with cold cuts and rye bread on it. He thinks if he eats the food it will form a rock in his throat and he will choke. There is a thunderstorm that night. Light breaks the sky but James does not watch. He lets the storm rock him, and when he allows his limbs to sink into the bed sleep comes.

* * *

**What will survive **

_Dinner? Or breakfast?_

Audrey smiles when she thinks of the way his voice petered out on the last word, his eyes flickering in embarrassment at the double entendre he had accidentally applied. She cracks an egg into the bowl and as she does so finds a shiver run beneath the silk of her camisole. Shrugging it away she moves over to the sink to wash the splinters of shell and the remnants of egg white from her fingers.

It happens suddenly, a thunderclap inside her head, a pain that starts in a ball and radiates outwards until it grips her skull. She falls to her knees, her hands cradling her head, and then, she feels no more.

_She hears her voice; it is hers, isn't it? She is murmuring and she can feel a soft tiny head on her shoulder. When she looks to her right, she sees the baby, his face turned to hers, his mouth ajar between rosebud lips. He has dark hair that stands up in a fluffy Mohawk. It is right that he is there._

_The air around them is still, and in front the ocean is pulsing, each successive wave larger than the last. In the distance she hears thunder, feels its heat crackle along her arms._

_The storm is coming. _

_He stirs against her, his lips press together as if ready for a kiss._

When she comes round she can still feel the warm weight of the baby, but it is Nathan's face close to hers, his brow creased as he holds her in his lap.


End file.
